Category Archives: Birthdays

Birthdays, Today in history, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang

Leave a comment

Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang

Remembering Michael Lang on his birthday
December 11, 1944 – January 8, 2022

If you’ve arrived here directly or via Facebook, I will assume that you are already familiar with Mr Lang and who he is. I’ll just bullet-point a few facts about him.

  • he was born in Brooklyn, New York
  • in 1967, he moved to Coconut Grove, Florida and  opened a head shop: papers, posters, black lights, and similar things to help enhance one’s day.
Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
  • in 1968,  Lang assisted in the production of the 1968 Miami Pop Festival.” It featured Steppenwolf, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Mothers of Invention, Blue Cheer, Crazy World of Arthur Brown,Chuck Berry, The Blues Image, Pacific Gas and Electric, and Three Dog Night.
Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
  • he left Miami and moved to Woodstock, NY. He also spent a lot of time in NYC where he and Artie Kornfeld came up with the idea to create a recording studio in Woodstock for the growing number of so-called “underground” musicians living there such as Paul Butterfield, Van Morrison, and others. Of course, Bob Dylan was there, too.
  • he, Kornfeld, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman formed Woodstock Venturers for that purpose.
    Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang

    Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
    August 18, 2013, Michael Lang and Joel Rosenman at memorial service for Richie Havens at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (photo by James Shelley)
  •  he did not help produce the Altamont Free Concert in December 1969, but he did assist in the relocation of the event after it had to be moved.
  • Lang also managed several successful international recording artists, including Joe Cocker, Rickie Lee Jones, Willie DeVille, Tarkan, and Spanish recording artists El Ultimo de la Fila.
  • Lang owned and operated Just Sunshine Records, which produced and released more than 40 albums by such diverse musical artists as Karen Dalton, Betty Davis, and Mississippi Fred McDowell.
  • Today, Woodstock.com is a place where people can explore what Michael Lang and the others involved in Woodstock Venture are up to and offering now.

Death

Michael Lang died at Sloan Kettering hospital in New York. He was 77.

Michael Pagnotta, a rep for Lang and longtime family friend, confirmed the promoter’s death to Rolling Stone, adding that the cause was a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Remembrance

Michael Lang’s death was obviously in the news everywhere. Likely hundreds of obituaries and remembrances could be found. I chose the following from Bill Hanley, the person who did the sound at Woodstock:

Michael Lang died on January 8, 2022.

He was a friend of mine. We worked together at many festival gigs, most notably Woodstock ’69.
Because of my experience Michael believed I would deliver the best possible sound, and I did.
He told me decades later he knew I could be trusted to be fully conscious all the time because I didn’t do drugs or drink. He was right.
In the past month there has been much written and broadcast about Michael, all favorable and to which I don’t feel I could add anything more to this distinguished person’s character.
Except one thing…
For the summer of August, 2019, because plans for the 50th Woodstock Event were canceled, Michael came up to Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, NY. Me, my wife, my son and all his friends, Rona Elliot and Henry Diltz were staying at Max Yasgur’s house (graciously offered to us by Jeryl Abramson, now owner of Yasgur’s Farm).
Michael was a celebrity when he came, everyone was thrilled to see him. With an extended hand shake he humbly spoke to everyone. After the drum circle and the place calmed down me, my wife Rhoda, Rona and Michael were left sitting around Max’s kitchen table. The four of us started talking about our childhoods, our families, telling stories. Some were so funny we were just bending over the table with laughter. Into the wee hours of the early morning we shared our past. I got to know Michael and he got to know us just as plain ordinary people. No rock ‘n roll, not show biz just human beings with stories, many just totally hilarious. I treasure this night.
I will miss Michael.
February 3. 22
Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
Birthdays, Today in history

Military Kool Aid Acid Tests

Leave a comment

Military Kool Aid Acid Tests

MKULTRA

The popular series Stranger Things may seem like another interesting fictional suggestion that there are secret government secret programs unleash terror upon peaceful law-abiding citizens, but MKULTRA was an actual program.

Army Kool Aid Acid Tests

Military Kool Aid Acid Tests

MKULTRA

When it came to drug experimentation, the Feds were no slouches. The CIA program had its secret and illegal MKULTRA program that went on from 1953 to 1964. It tested subjects at over 80 institutions, many of which were fronts funded by the government and filtered to schools, private hospitals and even a jails. (Army Acid Test).

It had existed under previous names such as Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke. One of MKULTA’s goals was to develop a robot-like assassin, a real-life “Manchurian Candidate.”

On one level, the drug program hoped to achieve a simple drug protocol to effortlessly get Soviet spies to “spill their guts.” The means toward that end were typically illegal.

Director of Central Intelligence, Admiral Stansfield M. Turner, wrote a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which that Committee released in 1977. In it Turner wrote that:

…the following types of activities were undertaken:

A. Possible additional cases of drugs being tested on American citizens, without their knowledge.

B. Research was undertaken on surreptitious methods of administering drugs.

C. Some of the persons chosen for experimentation were drug addicts or alcoholics.

D. Research into the development of a knockout or “K” drug was performed in conjunction with research being done to develop pain killers for advanced cancer patients, and tests on such patients were carried out.

E. There is a possibility of an improper payment to a private institution.

Volunteers

When our government needs experimental subjects, an easy pool of “volunteers” would be, of course, our Armed services.

From the looks of things it was an unqualified success as long as the goal was for the soldiers to have some fun and ignore orders. Here is a US Army film of its 1963 experiment. One soldier, James Stanley, sued government afterward saying the drug caused his marriage to fail. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled against him (Ruling Reopens Wound for Bitter Ex-soldier), but in 1991, Stanley finally succeeded. (U.S. Backs Payment for Soldier in LSD Tests)

Military Kool Aid Acid Tests

Fall in

The CIA destroyed most of the documents relating to the project in 1973.

November 27, 1964: the British did their own experiment as part of research into how the drug might affect military operations. From the Imperial War Museum’s description of the filmed summary: Introductory title places trial in context of recent research to discover chemical agents able to incapacitate enemy forces but with negligible risk of fatal casualties. … One Marine in state of distress is comforted by nurse, while others smile and laugh hysterically, one attempting to cut down a tree with his spade, and another climbing the tree. … After exercise Marines rest in bed in Porton ward … One very distressed Marine is held by duffel coated doctor and scientist, muttering “I am not going to die.”  

Military Kool Aid Acid Tests

Ironic Acid Tests

Military Kool Aid Acid TestsNovember 27, 1965: Ken Kesey began his acid tests. Not documented as such, it may have included the first performance by The Grateful Dead, known as The Warlocks. Held in Soquel, it was a small semi-public event advertised only at the local Hip Pocket underground bookstore.

Military Kool Aid Acid Tests
Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

Leave a comment

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

Born November 19, 1943
Woodstock alum with Blood, Sweat and Tears
Many happy returns

 

Fred Lipsius

Fred was born in the Bronx, NYC and began playing the clarinet when he was 9.

From a 2014 staxshed.com interview:

I’m the only musician in my family. I’m the middle child of three kids. One of my mother’s brothers played piano, but not professionally, and one of my Dad’s brothers played too, but he just read piano sheet music. So I sort of felt like the ‘ugly duckling’ (the ‘different’ one, who chose to be a ‘musician’) out of everyone in my family. I was always deeply moved by music as far as I can remember. It’s always been a very pure thing for me. When I was about seven I saw Louis Armstrong and his band on TV. I didn’t really know what jazz was at that time but I told my mom that I want to do that.

In public school, all of the 4th graders took a music test to see which of us had talent in that area. I passed the test and was put into a special music class in my 5th and 6th grades. I played clarinet and was basically the worst clarinetist of about 20 kids. I only practiced 20 minutes a day (this included putting the clarinet together with cork grease and taking it apart and swabbing it)! Back then, I was more interested in playing basketball. But in the 6th grade, for some reason, I improved and became first or second in my class. I bought a few Benny Goodman records and was able to copy just a few of his licks by ear, although I really didn’t have much of an ear back then. My ear did develop into my teens, from listening to and transcribing solos of my favorite jazz players (mostly saxophone and piano). My favorite alto players were Bird, Sonny Stitt and CannonbalI. I also listened to Rollins and Coltrane on tenor. I still have a copy of all the solos and licks I transcribed. They’re now in a big loose leaf book, neatly re-copied. I show this book to my private students at Berklee to encourage them to do some work like I did.

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

More

From his site and his label’s sites:

[He began to play] “…alto and tenor saxophones in Junior High School, and piano at Music and Art High School in Manhattan. He continued his studies at Berklee School of Music (1961-62), and then went on the road. Fred Lipsius was the original saxophonist, arranger and conductor with Blood, Sweat & Tears (1967-71). He also doubled on keyboards. While with the band, he won nine Gold Records plus a Grammy Award for his arrangement of “Spinning Wheel” and a Grammy for ‘Album of the Year’ as a BS&T band member. Fred also arranged and co-arranged, respectively, the hit singles “Hi-De-Ho” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.” He brought the “jazz” element to the band and the public with his arrangements and solos on sax and piano. In both the Downbeat and Playboy jazz polls he placed in the top ten of the alto sax category. Rock and Roll history books credit him as the first saxophonist to mix jazz and rock styles in his solos.

Fred has composed, arranged and produced radio and TV commercials, including 2 CBS TV logos & themes introducing the season’s upcoming shows. In the spring of 1982, he toured with Simon and Garfunkel in Japan and Europe, and was a featured soloist. Fred has authored seven books/CDs on jazz improvisation and jazz reading, published throughout the world. Other published works of his include small combo and big band jazz/fusion arrangements.

He has performed with jazz greats Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Eddie Gomez, Al Foster, George Mraz, Larry Willis, Randy Brecker, Rodney Jones, plus a number of prominent Berklee College of Music faculty such as Herb Pomeroy, Alan Dawson, Ray Santisi, and Donald Brown. He has written music for and performed on over 30 CDs as both a leader and sideman.

In 2020, Fred retired from Berklee College of Music in Boston after teaching full-time for 35 years.

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

Spinning Wheel

If you’ve ever visited the Museum at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, then “Spinning Wheel”  will sound familiar. Here is an 2004 interview with him.

Fred’s recent projects include new music, original computer art, and his book, “The Tree With Many Colors”, which contains insights about the giving and receiving of love… the purpose of life.

In 2020, Fred retired from Berklee College of Music in Boston after teaching full-time for 35 years.

Click for more including about his digital art >>> his site

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius